Rules of Engagement

Should be viewed by anyone considering a career in the service. Great performances by a coupl of our best actors. Sadly the topic is an all too familiar one of the government selling out the men and women who serve it.

For extreme-right-wing, little-brown-person-denigrating, jingoistic, racist, xenophobic major-studio pap, you'd have to go back to the liberal journalist David Janssen following John Wayne around and finally seeing the light in the 1969 GREEN BERETS.

The proposition here is that Samuel L. Jackson is sent into the U.S. Embassy in Yemen to save the ambassador (Ben Kingsley, quivering with perfidy) and his family. He does--and even risks his life to run back and save the shot-up American flag. (Shtik like this was considered too corny not just in RAMBO, but in the RAMBO sequels.) As Sam and his Marines are about to make it out, shots--both from nearby snipers, and from a crowd of demonstrators gathered outside the embassy--are taking down Sam's guys. So he issues a command, which can be rendered on the IMDB as "Waste those mudder fruggers!" And Samuel L.'s jarheads waste not one, not two, not a handful of bad apples, but every last man, woman and child in that pile of mudder fruggers. The next day, the cover of the Washington Post looks like My Lai, or the Guyana suicides.

Through the course of the movie, Jackson's character never shows the slightest remorse--he isn't troubled in the least by the fact that at least a few of the people he shot (the six-year-old girls, say) might have been completely innocent. He's convinced he did what he had to do and what he was told to do--and anybody who disagrees is a conspiring, back-stabbing desk jockey keeping the godly warriors of our culture from winning the damn wars.

The movie is a Vietnam-compensation fantasy, like RAMBO or UNCOMMON VALOR...but we're in the year 2000, and it plays a little creepy. "This is a different world," Jackson tells the Marine lawyer whose life he once saved (Tommy Lee Jones). "No enemies, no friends, no lines, no Mom, no Pop." RULES OF ENGAGEMENT tests out an evil new template: the Islamic fundamentalist as the stand-in for the Viet Cong (or Soviet) savage. Behind the heroism, the flag worship, the supplicating honor-guard musical score, lies the presumption that American lives are just worth a hell of a lot more than Yemeni lives--or, to use the prologue as an example, Vietnamese lives, either. And though the director, William Friedkin, fastens ghoulishly onto images of charred, limbless or blood-spattered children, the implication is made, as in THE GREEN BERETS, that that cute little crippled girl just might pull out a pistol and blast your American manhood clean off.

Is Friedkin just a super-competent dude looking for a comeback, or is he subverting this material? I'd like to buy into the latter. His focus on the injuries done by Jackson to children are not just EXORCIST-style morbidity--Friedkin seems to be making the point that the script refuses to make: that Jackson's actions are evil and insane, and arguably deserving of a roomful of gas pellets.

Samuel Jackson, Tommy Lee Jones, and the producer, Scott Rudin, one of the most intelligent guys in studio movies, all deserve to hang down their heads in shame for this one. This is the case of smart people--I include Friedkin in this--testing the waters of the post-Clinton era to see if Reaganite jingoism might make a comeback as a story template for pop movies. But none of the Sly or Arnold movies of the eighties was as morally ugly as this one. And using a black actor to sell this patently racist bill of goods is the ultimate insult. The movie leaves you feeling unclean.

There is an anti-American uprising in Yemen. Col. Terry Childers, played by Samuel L. Jackson, is sent to evacuate the U.S. embassy. Childers gives his Marines the order to fire back at hostile, armed civilians. This action results into a framed court martial. Defending Childers is Col. Hays Hodges, played by Tommy Lee Jones. Childers saved Hodges' life in Nam and the elder Marine lawyer feels obligated to return the good deed.

The scenes of engagement are very powerful and gruesome. Childers and Hodges have a knock down, drag out of a fist fight. The films climax kind of fizzles. The movie seems so potent up until the end. Don't underestimate a Marine's ethics or this movie. This is a winner, even if the plot seems so familiar.

William Friedkin directs and there is a decent supporting cast that includes Bruce Greenwood, Ben Kingsley and Ann Archer.

Years have past since Col Hodges and Col Childers were comrades in combat. Hodges is now retired while Childers is still on active service in the Middle East. When he is called in to help protect and evacuate the US Embassy in the middle of a riot, Childers orders his men to return fire despite not having any definite targets. With a crowd of 80 dead, many women and children, the authorities are forced to go after Childers to have someone to blame. Childers turns to his old friend to help defend him.

With a pair of real heavyweights in lead roles I was quite looking forward to this film. It is quite easy to get into the film as the opening 40 minutes are pretty exciting and shocking in equal measure – it forces you to think where you stand on the action taken by Childers in both past and present. However as the film goes on the moral debate becomes simplified and it is clear where we are being steered, as opposed to being allowed to think things out for ourselves. The `debate' or thoughtful side is lost and we are left with the courtroom drama side of things.

I'm not a big fan of courtroom thrillers as they often rely on unlikely twists at the end and lots of shouting in place of substance. However I do enjoy the odd one if it hangs together and has energy. However, the courtroom scenes here never really get off the ground and surprisingly (given the emotive subject) really lack energy and twists. Even the conclusion of the film is a real damp squid, the verdict is simply delivered, so if you're expecting twists and turns and big revelations forget it. Inexplicably, the film puts up two or three captions over the final shot to tell us more information – for some of these the film would have been much more exciting if it had worked these into the final 20 minutes of the film. To have them as flat words on a screen is pointless (especially since this isn't a true story!).

Jones and Jackson both do good work, as you'd expect for a pair of tough nuts such as they. Jackson has the better character (until the script weakens itself). Pearce is OK in support but the script doesn't give him too much to work with, his side of the case is easy of course, so the film stops him overpowering the court case at the same time as it simplifies it's stance. Support from faces such as Kingsley, Archer, Greenwood and Underwood is OK but in some cases are so brief to be cameos.

Overall this starts well, but it fairs to really involve once the moral debate side of the film is simplified and phased out. The question `what would you do' is rendered null and void with each flashback Jackson has. The courtroom scenes barely fizzle let alone ignite the screen and the film putters to a poor ending that is badly done. Worth seeing with good performances from the leads but still a pretty big disappointment.

This is a military court martial movie with a few similarities to A Few Good Men. It did not have as much suspense, but overall it was still quite good. I thought the situation in Yemen made it very applicable to current day problems in Arab-American relations. The movie was released before the USS Cole attack, which reinforces the possibility of the event in question in the court-martial. I don't think the massacre that occurred would have been quite so bloody in a real world situation though.

The performances of Tommy Lee Jones, Samuel L. Jackson and Guy Pearce were very good. Probably no Oscars here, but well worth watching.